Mobility in the corporate world is increasing at an incredible rate with users traveling around the globe and working partially or fully at home. The ability to move and remain fully connected is the paramount concern. The office connection needs to be pervasive and available no matter where the user is physically located. Productivity shall not be hindered simply because the user is not in the corporate office.
Remote Access Point (RAP) solutions involve configuring a thin access point to provide certain level of services to a remote client by tunneling securely back to the corporate network. The same Service Set Identifiers (SSIDs), encryption, and authentication requirements that exist on the corporate network are present on the RAP. The client device at a remote node or branch will automatically associate with the RAP as it would in the central node or corporate network, and allows for centralized management of a truly mobile edge. Thus, RAP is an extension of the corporate network in a similar fashion to a branch office with simplified configurations and integrated security.
A RAP can connect to a corporate network through a multi-mode modem that supports multiple types of networks, e.g., 2G networks, 3G networks, 4G networks, etc. Usually, the multi-mode modem is configured with a factory default setting indicating an Internet Service Provider (ISP) preferred network. If the multi-mode modem fails to establish a connection over the ISP-preferred network, it will select a secondary network. However, in some cases, the multi-mode modem is able to establish a connection on the ISP-preferred network. Nonetheless, the quality of connection over the ISP-preferred network between the RAP and the control device on the corporate network may not be good enough for establishing a secured tunnel, e.g., a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnel, for secure data transmission. As a result, remote users will fail in their attempt to connect to the corporate network due to the poor signal quality of the connection on the ISP-preferred network.
Hence, conventional RAP solutions cannot assure quick selection of a stable network with a multi-mode modem over which a secure data transmission tunnel can be successfully established with the corporate network. At best, a network administrator has to track all available networks at the location of RAP deployment. If the network administrator observes that the network signal coverage on the ISP-preferred network is not good enough, and assuming that an alternative network at the location has better coverage, the network administrator will need to manually provision or re-provision the RAP with the parameters corresponding to the alternative network, and reboot the RAP if needed, such that the clients at the remote node/branch can establish a secure communication path with the corporate network through the modem over the alternative network.